


What Happened To Us?

by klutzy34



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Tag, Fixing Relationships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 19:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5677906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klutzy34/pseuds/klutzy34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A weekend brings issues long ignored to a boiling point in Steve and Danny's relationship, forcing them to confront that things are not okay and they need to do something or risk losing something very important to them. Episode tag to 6x11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Happened To Us?

The question rattled around his brain the entire flight home, like a neuron-powered version of Pong. He wisely kept it to himself, instead staring out the window and praying for decent winds and good weather to make the 45 minutes fly past instead of adding to the weekend of compounding misery. Unfortunately, quiet and lost in thought meant he had more time to dwell on the bits and pieces that accumulated since the first therapy session at their “retreat”. It wasn’t until they left the airport and clamored into the Camaro that Danny finally gave voice to the four words that continued to haunt him with a clarity he didn’t want, not this time. 

“What happened to us?” His voice remained soft and he wasn’t sure if Steve could hear him over the Camaro’s light purr. When he hazarded a sideways glance, he saw Steve’s grip on the steering wheel had tightened, knuckles slightly paler than the rest of his tan skin. He could picture the expression clearly without turning his head fully to look: jaw set with a small working tic, eyes focused intently on the road as if he could ignore a conversation starter that would drag him underneath deceptively calm waters quicker than he could fight it. 

“We - we always argued,” Danny continued, unwilling to let it go now. He couldn’t, not for the sake of _them_. Accidentally landing in couple’s therapy had done one thing for him, making him relive the demons of the past, the mistakes he made in his marriage that contributed to it crashing down around their ears. The yelling, the fighting, trying so hard to keep both away from Grace, and desperately wondering what could have been done to change their fate. He refused to make that mistake again, to lose another of the best things in his life because he was unwilling to try something. 

“It was our thing. It went back and forth, back and forth, you present your side and I tell you why I don’t agree or vice versa. It was how we worked things out, even if other people didn’t see it that way and who cares about them? It worked for us, okay? But lately, it’s been sharper, angrier. It’s like a papercut. The words slice and it stings at first, but then you can ignore it until something makes it flare to life again. Eventually it heals. Maybe.” The analogy broke down at the end but he felt it made his point enough, even with the weak ending. “If I have done something that has brought us to this, I need to know because I can’t fix what I don’t know,” he added in frustration, beating a fist lightly against his chest in emphasis. 

Steve remained silent beside him. His hand started to reach for the radio, to no doubt turn it on and avoid the conversation, but then it dropped down to the console and he sighed. Danny finally ventured a questioning look at his partner, surprised to find the other man looking weary instead of defensive, tired eyes and mouth turned down at the corners. He looked a few years older in a way that made Danny’s heart squeeze in sympathy and made him wonder if the Steve of the last several weeks wasn’t a Steve that covered too well that he was viciously hurting on the inside, more than he’d ever let on. And what kind of partner was he that he hadn’t seen past that armored wall Steve put up?

To his surprise, Steve didn’t take them home, but to the spot Danny came to think of as a retreat away from life since his first days on the island. He pulled the car up to the wall, switched off the ignition, and got out. Danny stayed still in his seat, watching Steve as the other man clasped his hands behind his head, staring out at the ocean. After a minute of stillness, Danny finally climbed from the car, closing the door gently behind him as if afraid to make a noise and disturb him. It wasn’t until he’d stood beside Steve for what seemed like minutes that the other man finally spoke up.

“I thought I was handling Catherine leaving better than I was, but I’m not.” His voice came out at the normal level, but it was flat, emotionless. Steve lowered his arms to his side. “I thought if I just pushed forward, it’d be okay eventually. Broken hearts mend, people move on.” He shrugged. “I just don’t know if I’m hurting because I was going to propose to her or if because planning to propose didn’t stop another person from leaving.” 

_From leaving you,_ Danny silently added to the end of the sentence, tilting his head sideways and squinting in the sun as he looked up at Steve. The man was still damnably hard to read but the one thing that gave the turmoil away beneath the neutral expression was that tic in the jaw that Danny came to associate with a Steve who was struggling to face what he’d been hiding from, something deep and guaranteed to hurt like hell. 

“Were you really ready to propose?” When Steve’s head swung around to fix him with a look, Danny quickly held up his hands. “That is a honest question, Steve. You came at it like an op and while it would be fitting for two former military members such as yourselves, I questioned the _why_. Correct me if I am wrong, but an operation is a carefully planned mission to make sure there are as few mistakes as possible to achieve a success. You cannot plan to make a person say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. That is their choice, not yours. If you were doing so, did you want to make sure she said yes because you wanted her to stay, because you were ready? Or did you want her to say yes because you thought that as what you were supposed to do to keep another connection from breaking?” 

Steve’s shoulders rose and lowered in a shrug, his head dipping down to stare at the dusty pavement under their feet. He didn’t want to talk about this but now that Danny found that crack in the armor, he was going to keep pushing until he had the knight in his underwear. _Wait - completely inappropriate analogy. 0/2 today, Williams._ He blamed it on the lack of sleep, the frustration and the irritation of the weekend reducing him to the basics of his vocabulary and mammal to mammal relating skills. 

“I feel like the fact that you resemble an overgrown child unable to answer straightforward questions is giving you an answer, whether you like it or not.” Steve raised his head to glare at him again, blue eyes reminding him of the ocean during a storm. He remembered the man he encountered in John McGarrett’s garage six years ago, restrained, controlled, emotion something risky and to be avoided most of the time. Then, as the years passed, as he remained with his team, his _ohana_ , Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett began to open up, became this man with a big heart, an optimistic outlook on life tempered by his Hawaii upbringing, before the military locked it away. The man who was a goof with a big smile, who saw the troubled and made them his own, who took people under his wing, made them his people. 

“No,” Steve answered through grit teeth, his arms crossing tightly, defensively, over his chest. “No, I don’t think I was. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care - “ 

Danny held up his hand. “On the contrary, I think you care about Catherine very much because you wanted her to stay. I think that you love her, yes, but Steve, that doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to move on, that you are not allowed to love again. Love is not a reservoir where it will eventually be tapped from use. If you choose to give it, you give as much as you want. Yes, you can rescind it if you choose, but this is not the case here. You can still love, present tense, Catherine, and choose to love someone else as well. It doesn’t mean you love her any less if she becomes your past and you look to the future.” His expression softened in sympathy and Danny found himself looking out to the water as well. 

“I - I still love Rachel, even with recent events. I will _always_ love Rachel, because we were amazing together and unfortunately, the shrapnel of the explosion of our marriage left wounds that will never heal. We couldn’t be together again, even if those stars aligned for us,” he continued, motioning from the sea to sky. “But she will still always be the woman that I couldn’t wait to propose to, so I gave her a soda can ring. It doesn’t mean that I won’t give my heart away again to the right person when it’s time.” 

Steve turned to him, arms dropping out so he could hold them out to his side. “It’s not just that, Danny. The history that Catherine and I shared - even if I proposed for the wrong reasons, hypothetically, she still left. _She still left._ Mom left, Dad sent us away, Mary Ann and I grew apart. Now - now I keep wondering when you’re going to leave me. Chin Ho, Kono, Grover. Max, Jerry. Nahele. I let too many people into my life and now they’re going to find a reason to move on and - I don’t know. If it hurts this bad with Catherine, how am I going to deal with all that, huh? Maybe it’s better if I - “ He made a motion of his own, like erecting a wall. “You know?” 

Danny’s mouth dropped open. “Hey! _You putz!_ ” Reaching out, he smacked Steve hard on the arm, making the other man shift away, expression angry. “When did I ever give indication that I was going to leave, huh? Is this what this is? You’ve been getting yourself ready for this departure that you think I’m going to make, huh?” he shot back, voice raising.

“You almost did. To New Jersey,” Steve pointed out quietly.

“But I didn’t because of _you_ , you schmuck.” Maybe it wasn’t the best plan to continue tossing those words at Steve, but Danny was on a roll now and there was no stopping the train to let a few passengers off. “You are one of the _best_ things that has ever happened to me, Steve. I have followed you to North Korea, Cambodia, Afghanistan, because I believe in you that much and despite what I may say at times, my life would be a much more hollow place without you in it! Do you think I say ‘I love you’ to just anyone? It might be harder to elicit from you, a real blue ribbon prize when achieved, but just because I may, at times, wear my heart on my sleeve does not mean I give freely to everyone.”

He sat down heavily on the Camaro, hands resting against his knees. “You’re not the only one who has watched people leave, Steve. I have watched them leave and I screamed until I was hoarse for them to wait up, but it was like they never heard me. I arrived here and I walked through an airport full of happy families, people reuniting, and I hated everything so, so much because it reminded me of what wouldn’t wait for me. People from New Jersey, my friends, they kept in touch but slowly, those times became farther and farther between because they had their own lives to move on with and I could not participate because I was _here_.” He jabbed a finger downward. “Yes, I am a grumpy person, I am sometimes very angry, but I still care, I still love, and goddamnit, Steve, _I am never going to leave you!_

Steve remained silent, still, a light breeze tugging at his t-shirt. Finally, he slowly turned to Danny, mouth open to speak, then snapping shut when no words came out. He ran a hand over his mouth, head tilting away. Pushing up from the hood, Danny walked to him slowly, arms out. There was no hesitation as Steve stepped into them and Danny wrapped his arms around him, hugging him tightly. Steve’s arms engulfed him like he was a lifesaver that he held onto for dear life. 

“Steve, I love you, but I’m only human. If you keep pushing and pushing, I’m going to get tired, I’m going to weaken, and I don’t want us going past a point of no return. I can’t lose _you_ ,” Danny murmured quietly to him, voice rough with desperately wrangled emotion. “Okay?” He felt a small nod against the top of his head. “I know that’s not how you were raised, I know it’s not what the military taught you, but from now on, we talk when something bothers us. We don’t need therapy, we need communication. I will communicate with you, if you communicate with me. We don’t need someone to poke at our problems, we need to figure them out and fix them ourselves. No leaving the car angry from now on.” Another small nod and Danny’s arms tightened just a little more. “We’re not going to leave you, I promise.” 

“Don’t yell at me if I find it hard,” Steve grumbled, vibrations rumbling through his chest as he spoke against the side of Danny’s face pressed there.

Danny snorted. “It wouldn’t be you if you didn’t, babe. I’m not asking you to change who you are, I’m asking you to give us a chance to fix things. We’re not going to be perfect and sometimes we’ll screw it up pretty damn good, but at least we try. We do that much, we’ve got a good shot.” He lifted his head to look up at Steve. “You with me?”

Steve nodded a few times, releasing him with one arm to turn around, pulling Danny to him again. Danny dropped an arm as well, standing side by side with him as they looked out at the ocean. “Can we forget this weekend ever happened?”

Danny sighed in relief. “I am so glad you asked. Happily.”

**Author's Note:**

> The episode left me pretty disappointed in how they dealt with things, so I wanted to put my own words to it. It can be seen as bromance or the beginning of an acknowledgement of something more. In either way, they deserved a chance to talk.


End file.
